Security Blankets
by FinniganToldMeTo
Summary: It's a one shot story about... Security blankets... in a way. It's a little weird, read to know what I mean.


-1**If you read this one… You're amazing. I don't know why I typed it and I kinda don't like how quick it is, but it made me smile to type, for the most part. I have several characters from favorite animes in mental hospitals stories, but this one is… different. And quicker, did I mention? I don't own any of them. Really, I don't. I wish I owned Ryuichi. He's my favorite.**

**Security Blankets: When To Let Go?**

Dark blue eyes, with the slightest hint of purple, seeming otherworldly to those around, gazed unblinking out the window. Sunglasses rested on the bridge of his nose, keeping out harsh light. Even still, the fluorescent lights in the hospital hurt him. A fit body, caressed by a long white robe, was lowered to a wheelchair. He never blinked, barely moved. The light had vanished from those blue and purple eyes. Trembling, delicate fingers clenched into fists.

He opened his mouth to scream, gave up, and let his head rest against his chest, those dull eyes finally fluttering shut. Life went on before his closed lids. Mothers ran their children to schools. Cars zoomed by at unbelievable speed. Executives, artists, corporate busy-bodies, and janitors all went about their daily lives, but within these walls, life ceased.

Movement. The slightest nudge and he was rolling down the hall, the familiar sound of the nurse's loafers shuffling along behind him. She pushed him along to the cafeteria. He opened his eyes and adjusted the sunglasses. They all were trying to get him to eat, but food held no taste anymore. Not since he lost his closest friend, the only one in the world that understood him.

It didn't make sense to those around him, but he knew it didn't have to. They'd shove him full of medicine and try to "forget" the problem. It was how they handled cases like his. They'd slap a multiple personality label on it and move to the next catatonic superstar.

Except he wasn't catatonic. Truth be told, he was appalled by their inattentive attitudes. Anyone in the hospital could hear his screams that day and know that he was, in fact, quite aware of his surroundings. Still, they babied him.

"_Only the finest doctors," _K had said.

"_Bring Ryuichi-san back to us," _Tohma had pleaded.

"_Shut him up!" _Yuki's shouted request.

"_Make his eyes shine again…" _

Shuichi's plea, simple and pure. He remembered the pink-haired rocker sitting in front of him in the doctor's office, staring into his eyes and begging for them to shine again. That was the one that made him stop screaming. He'd opened his eyes wide and stared at Shuichi, mind racing.

"_Shine?" He tried to say more, but the doctor began to talk and the nurse had led him out of the room. He dropped to his knees and refused to walk at all. _That was when the wheelchairs started. That was the last time he acknowledged his so-called saviors.

Now, he sat in the wheelchair in front of a table. An assortment of healthy foods sat before him. For the first time in two weeks, he decided to play their game. He picked up his fork and chose a bite of salad. A sigh escaped his lips and his nurse sat beside him, instantly concerned and excited at once.

"Are you alright, Sakuma-san? You seem to be a little more depressed than usual."

Ryuichi turned and looked past his nurse. He dropped the salad back on the plate and reached up to pull off his sunglasses. Once the nurse saw his eyes, she knew he wasn't feeling any better. Dull, lifeless orbs stared out from the centers of dark circles. Bloodshot eyes, the eyes of an alcoholic, the eyes of an insomniac, the eyes of a dying man, stared back at her. There was no shine, nothing that could even be mistaken for life within those eyes. His gaze was blank, as though he were lost in his thoughts, never to return.

Slowly, Ryuichi reached out for his fork, picking up another bite of salad. This time, the salad made it to his mouth. He chewed carefully, seeming to count each chew. He closed his eyes and swallowed the salad, gagging suddenly. Salad was not his favorite food. He liked sweet breads, and pocky, and when it had to be a real food, chicken was always tops on his list. None of his favorites lay before him, however, and he was stuck with the less than enjoyable vegetarian mixture this particular nurse had chosen. He pulled his sunglasses from the table and practically shoved them in front of his eyes.

"I'm not…" his voice was strained, though he hadn't spoken for days. He reached out for the water, took a few large swigs, cleared his throat, and started again. "I'm not hungry right now, thank you."

His nurse shook her head. "You haven't physically eaten in two weeks. The doctors have had to force feed you intravenously. Please, for the sake of your arms, eat."

He turned to her and began to speak, but another voice rang out across the room.

"Well, give him something more than rabbit food and pudding!" Ryuichi turned to see Hiro and Shuichi standing just in the doorway. They walked to his table, giant smiles on their faces, and Ryuichi knew that it had been Hiro who'd spoken up.

Shuichi nodded his agreement as they sat down across the table. "He needs nourishment, not plants. Isn't that right, Sakuma-san?"

Ryuichi smiled, for the first time in weeks. "They let visitors in finally?"

Hiro shook his head. "No, we had to fight our way in."

"But you need the company. How can being around all these doctors and nurses be fun, eh?" Shuichi quipped, leaning forward and poking at the salad on Ryuichi's plate. He then leaned back and dug into a plastic bag he held at his side. "I brought you some real food!" He pulled a warm Tupperware dish from the bag and passed it across the table. "Chicken and rice. It's simple, but it's one of the best things for a depressed man, to be reintroduced to his favorite things. One of yours is, this food!"

Ryuichi grabbed the dish quickly and looked questioningly at his nurse. "May I…?"

She studied him a moment and smiled finally. "It's the first time you've even come close to being happy since you got here. Go ahead."

Ryuichi didn't question it. Yes meant yes and he dug in. Within minutes, the chicken was gone and the rice was halfway there. He gulped down the food with relish, smiling as he finally set the fork down and pushed the plate away, completely empty. "Thank you, Shu-chan."

Shuichi nodded brightly and stared at him a moment. "Why did you shut everyone out, Sakuma-san?"

"Ryuichi… is my name…" He turned away and let out a sigh.

Shuichi sighed and nodded. "Yes, it is… but I don't… know if I can call you that-"

"I just said you can."

"You know what I mean… Don't dodge the question. Your eyes almost shone when you were eating. I could tell, even through your glasses."

Ryuichi shook his head suddenly. "No, good food is good food… But I don't think anything can replace what he gave me… He was the only true friend I had."

Hiro let out a growl. "He was a frickin' st-"

"Hiro…" came a warning tone from Shuichi. He then turned back to Ryuichi. "I know. I wish that there were some way to fix it. To fill the void. But I can't think of anything."

"Neither can I." Ryuichi moved to stand up, and was instantly pushed back into the chair by the nurse.

"I'm not losing you again. It's almost time for your talk with the doctor, remember?" Her tone held the authority of a school teacher with the love and caring of a mother. It stopped Ryuichi in his tracks. He let himself fall back to the chair and closed his eyes, leaning his head in one hand.

"Fine."

The nurse stood and smiled at Hiro and Shuichi. "Thank you boys, but you'll have to go now. He has to see the doctor, then he'll be going to bed. He's done a lot of moving around today." With that, she wheeled Ryuichi out of the cafeteria, leaving the boys behind to think.

"I don't understand it," Seguchi Tohma muttered as he paced his office. He turned and looked at the two boys in the chairs across from him. "You're sure he's that depressed? That doesn't sound like Ryuichi, not at all…"

"It's true. He smiled when he ate the food, but I think that place is making things worse on him. At least he was… more talkative before." Shuichi shook his head and sighed.

"Yeah, he was very quiet, and curt whenever he did actually speak." Hiro shrugged. "That place is getting to him. You can see it in his eyes, even through the sunglasses."

"He still wears those things in there?" Tohma turned and chuckled. "Do the lights bother him that much?"

"I doubt it," Hiro replied. "He's probably hiding the bloodshot look. He hasn't been sleeping. Another thing you can tell by looking at him."

"Wha?" Shuichi turned and stared at Hiro. "I didn't see any of that."

"You were looking for answers in his words, Shuichi. I was looking in his eyes for the answers. And his actions." Hiro sat forward and looked up at Tohma. "You have to get him out of there. That place is just going to drain him to nothing. He's already wasting away."

"He's so lost," Tohma sighed. "How am I supposed to take care of him?"

"Don't."

The three turned to find K and Yuki in the doorway.

"What?" Tohma gasped.

"I said don't," K repeated. "Let me take care of him. Take him over to my family in New York. They'll set him straight, make him Ryuichi again."

"If they don't kill him!" Tohma blurted suddenly, motioning toward the gun at K's hip. He quickly regained his composure and sighed. "We should try to find him…"

No one spoke. They all knew what Tohma was talking about, and they each thought it completely ridiculous in their own way. Yuki, after much silence, was the first to speak.

"Or let's just let him stew… bad enough we have Shuichi on this side of the padded walls. Don't need two of them." He walked over to Shuichi's chair and leaned down, resting his arms on the back of the chair and dangling a hand to play with the younger man's hair.

"You're harsh," Shuichi muttered. "It's only because I love you that I put up with it."

Yuki nodded. "Oh, you know I kid… to an extent."

K came forward and leaned against Hiro's chair, putting both his hands on the guitarist's head and pressing down, his own way of messing around with the other man. "We need to get him out of there, and I mean it. He could do well at my place. My mother and father adored him the last time he was there. Lavished him with gifts and such."

Tohma nodded and sat down in his chair opposite the other men. "That's true. He could use the attention, I'm sure. He feeds off it… But I don't think that he'll ever get better until…" He sighed and shook his head. "Fine, get him out of there, K. Do whatever you want with him afterward, if you think it will help. Just get him out of there."

"Can do!"

"Oh, and K?" K turned to meet a very angry looking Seguchi Tohma. Tohma clenched his fists and took a deep breath before he continued. "That man is like a brother to me. If you do anything, ANYTHING, to hurt him, I will wring your neck and hang you out to dry in the middle of a violent hurricane. Do you understand?"

K nodded weakly, standing up straight and almost saluting the other. He turned and walked out of the room, not a word spoken. If there was one person in the world that had ever managed to scare K, it had been Tohma. Why else would he do nearly anything the man would say? It wasn't for the money. That was just a part of it. It was mainly because he was afraid to disobey Seguchi Tohma.

Shuichi smiled over at Tohma. "He'll take care of him. Don't worry."

"I'll worry anyway," Tohma muttered, before turning away. "Go home guys. I'm going to try to find him…"

The other three stood and left the room, knowing when to listen, just as K did. "See you… around," Yuki mumbled as they walked out. "Don't overwork yourself."

He sat alone, outside the doctor's office. K had been talking with the doctor for two hours now. Every now and then, he heard their voices get louder, angrier, then they'd settle down into a quiet argument again. This went on and on, and he wasn't allowed to go anywhere. He was getting restless. He hated sitting around doing nothing. He suddenly had an urge to get up and go draw on something, or walk around outside with a big stick, hitting the trees. Anything to get away from the eerie silence of the hallway.

He finally decided to get up, looking around for any guards or nurses that might have been ordered to KEEP HIM STILL. Seeing no one, he pushed his sunglasses down on his face, gazed over the edges with a weary eye, then wandered toward the yard, ready to socialize with the other patients, and without his nurse or doctor knowing that he was doing it. After all, he was doing this healing thing on his own. He didn't want them to think that THEY were making him better. That would be like letting them believe a lie. That would be wrong, and Kumagoro had always told him that doing the wrong things never made anyone happy.

Stopping abruptly in the awning just outside the door, Ryuichi brought a hand up to his eyes. He covered them for a long moment, hiding them from the sun, and hiding his tears from the world. He'd quickly reminded himself of how alone he really was here, no friends, no family. He knew what K was trying to do. He was trying to free him from this padded prison. He chuckled to himself suddenly. What a phrase.

"I think I'll write a song for that title, when I get out of here," he whispered to himself as he pushed the sunglasses closer to his face. "Padded Prison. It has a nice ring." Slowly, Sakuma Ryuichi stepped out into the yard and into the watchful eyes of all the other mental patients. They turned and watched him closely as he walked down the path. He crept along, not sure where to go at first. Then, he saw the garden, and he turned for that beautiful haven.

Inside the garden, he found a small child, no older than ten years old. She was sitting alone, playing in the dirt. He knew there must be a nurse watching her from close by, but within the flowerbeds and fountains, this girl looked like she was just having fun in her own backyard. Ryuichi approached slowly and sat down next to her.

"Can I play?" he asked carefully. The girl stared at him a moment, confused and concerned. Then, she smiled and held out a handful of mud.

"Play, yes." her smile reached his very heart. She was bright and alive on the inside, even though the doctors spoke otherwise. He could tell that she held within herself the same light and fire that had once burned so brightly within himself, that still burned brightly within Shuichi.

"That would be nice," Ryuichi smiled as he took the mud from her and set it down, shaping it into a sort of dome-shaped mound. "What's your name?"

The girl began helping him to pile more mud onto the mound, humming a familiar tune the whole time. "Jamie." She whispered.

"Jamie?" Ryuichi turned a thoughtful eye on the girl. "You're an American girl."

"Yes," she replied, smiling. "Mom and Dad brought me here a while back. And now I'm sick, so they brought me here."

"You're sick? You don't look sick."

"I'm not." She giggled lightly and added another handful to their building. "But I like it here. You must like it here too, because you're not sick, but you stay?"

Ryuichi shook his head. "I am sick," he said. "Up here." He pointed to his left temple.

Jamie looked at him a long moment and reached up, pulling his sunglasses away from his face. He squinted for a moment, then stared down at her, bloodshot eyes shining with the light from the sun.

"You don't look sick." She turned back to her building, now ignoring him completely.

"You don't look sick," Tohma was saying as he watched Ryuichi stare out the window of K's car. "You look very good, actually."

"Thanks," Ryuichi whispered. "But the compliments are just that, nothing else."

"Ryuichi-san!" Tohma sighed and dropped his head into his hands, his hat falling forward and off his head. "You… used to be so happy, so vibrant. Now, you're a brooding mass of… anger. It's like you're a teenager again."

"That might not be so bad," K laughed. "That's almost like being a kid again."

"Did you find him?" Ryuichi asked. K stopped laughing immediately.

"Give up, Ryuichi," K offered. "It's not healthy. You haven't slept properly in so long. You haven't been eating right. You need to forget about him. He's never coming back."

Ryuichi shook his head and looked away, to the setting sun. "He will… Someday. You just don't believe enough."

"SAKUMA-SAN!" Shuichi leapt into the arms of his idol as he walked through the door to K's apartment. Hiro, Shuichi, and Yuki were all waiting there for K, Tohma, and Ryuichi. "I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU! A welcome home gift!" Shuichi grabbed Ryuichi's hand and forced it over his eyes. He then grabbed the other hand and dragged Ryuichi to where Yuki stood. Yuki held out a small bag. "Okay!" Shuichi hollered, a little less loudly than before. "Open your eyes!"

Ryuichi looked at Yuki, who shoved the bag at him.

"Open it already," Yuki demanded, glaring at the artist. "And stop gawking at me."

Ryuichi dug into the bag and slowly pulled out a small pink stuffed rabbit. His eyes slowly widened as he recognized every inch of the rabbit's fabric, until they finally shone with the light Shuichi had once described as Ryuichi's own light from within.

"KUMAGORO!" Ryuichi hugged the rabbit to his chest and danced around Yuki, hugging him, then Shuichi. He then leapt to the window and started pointing outside at the view, showing Kumagoro the world. "Where were you, Mister? I was so worried. You could have called. You won't believe what I had to go through to get to this point. They wouldn't even let me look for you… There was this nurse, and she was mean. Then there was this doctor, and he was meaner. But this girl. She made me think of you. She was like you so much. I couldn't believe it. Oooooh! Look at that plane! It's flying so high!"

His mindless babble toward the rabbit continued, more words spouting out every second than the others could keep up with. K and Hiro just smiled at the excited star, while Tohma slipped over to Yuki and Shuichi.

"Where'd you find him?"

Yuki laughed a bit and pointed at Shuichi. "This little brat found him at a child's playground."

"He was THIS close to becoming a toy for someone else." Shuichi giggled. "That lucky bunny."

"It's amazing, isn't it?" K whispered to Hiro. "It's just a stuffed animal. It's amazing that it could mean so much to him."

"Not surprising at all, K." Hiro laughed. "It's his security blanket. I wouldn't give up my security blanket for the world. Everyone has one, even you."

"What's yours?" K asked casually.

"A handkerchief my mother gave me when I was three. Shuichi has a stuffed mouse that he's carried around since he was two."

K smiled and looked to Tohma, Yuki, and Shuichi. He watched as Tohma watched Ryuichi with a smile in his eyes. "Tohma's is Ryuichi's safety. They really have become family. And Yuki's is obviously Shuichi, lately. Shuichi represents all the youth that Yuki never had… And mine is…"

"Your gun?" Hiro laughed suddenly. K grabbed him in a headlock and laughed with him.

"Well, that's less embarrassing than the real story, now isn't it?"

**End**

**Okay, this one's weird… but I like the way it ended… Ryuichi's eyes really do shine, and it's magnificent. BTW, if I got his eye color wrong, it's because every source I found had a different idea of what it really was, so I just picked a random color that looked and sounded close enough to me, so please, if you're going to critique, don't do that one… I already know.**


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